Welcome to Part Two of our Summer Cocktail Week, the series in which we ply you, gentle garden reader, with drinks for the warm weather. The classic Dark and Stormy cocktail is one of our favorites this time of year, even if the name doesn’t square...
You know that feeling you get when you come in from the cold and there’s a hot toddy waiting for you, all roaring with lemony steam? It gets the heart pumping and the skin glowing. It's a feeling that lights up the darkest December sky! With...
We met our neighbor Kimberly’s roses before we met Kimberly herself. They’re bright and big and perfumey, her roses, when they’re in bloom: flashes of apricot and salmon winding around the black fence that lines her yard. “Welcome home!” they’d cheer when we turned the...
Paris, 1988. When François Pasquier returned to the city after a stint abroad, he invited a handful of friends to Bois de Boulogne for a picnic. When a handful turned into a horde, guests conspired to dress in head-to-toe white so they could spot each...
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t remember their first drop of gin and tonic? Love it or not, it’s a singular experience for sure: the kick of quinine in the tonic, the gin’s vegetal blast, the lime’s juicy finish. We were even drinking gin and tonics...
Last week on the Fourth of July, we welcomed a group of friends who drove down from L.A. for the weekend. (We also worked on our vertical herb garden — but more on that later.) After an afternoon of drinking dark-and-stormies on the beach —...
Oh, the lengths we've gone and the backflips we've done in pursuit of a cup of iced Coffea arabica: brimming mugs balanced in the freezer. Lava-hot joe poured over iceburgs. Whatever we did, it just didn't taste like our favorite cafe's version (sweet, complex and tea-like...
Summer of 2012: basil gimlets. Summer of 2009: beer-garitas. Summer of 2004: anything with muddled mint and sugar. (Summers prior to 2004…? We plead the fifth.) As soon as the seasons change, there’s a cocktail or an ingredient that becomes the center of our drinking universe....
Two weekends ago, we traded the cacti of California for the Douglas firs (and snappy wildflowers!) of the Pacific Northwest. This mini-vacation included an enlightening trek to The Herbfarm, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant and dining tour-de-force in Woodinville, Washington. We also visited its five-acre...
Last Friday’s party at the San Diego Museum of Art spoke to the sensualist in us all. First, there were the visual fireworks of 103 artworks matched with 103 floral interpretations that made good use of ranunculus stems, globe thistle and naturally fluorescent king protea....